


A Devouring Sky

by loversandantiheroes



Series: Panacea [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, in the world of slow burns this is basically kindling at this point, the world has exploded again and no one is having a good time, too early for shipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 05:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18046256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: The air itself rent asunder,Spilling light unearthly from theWaters of the Fade,Opening as an eye to lookUpon the Realm of OppositionIn dire judgement.- Exaltations 1--------------------All stories have beginnings.  This is theirs.





	1. Chapter 1

With the conclave set to begin in a bare few hours, Haven was a mess of milling bodies.  Weaving knots of mages and templars trying to keep as vast a distance between each other as possible, not daring to break the Most Holy's ordered truce, but not quite trusting the others to do the same.  The Seeker's men were focused far more intently on the uneasy masses than they were on one lowly, and rather slippery, dwarf - not that Cullen blamed them on that account. Nearly three years of open warfare would make anyone wary, if not outright paranoid.

Cassandra was less than pleased with the oversight, however, and had enlisted Cullen’s help in tracking down her misplaced charge.  He could have told her outright where to find Varric, but given her current temperament, that hadn’t seemed the _safest_ course of action.  At least not for Varric’s sake.

The little tavern didn’t have a name.  Didn’t even have a sign. It sat up on the second tier of the village, just under the bare courtyard of Haven’s Chantry.  The barkeep, Flissa, a pleasant, round-shouldered woman with dark hair, nodded and smiled as Cullen pushed through the door. In a corner by the fire, crammed into a tall-backed chair with a seemingly untouched tankard of ale, Varric Tethras sat staring disconsolately into the flames.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Cullen said, coming close enough to warm his hands.

Varric grunted.  “On a scale from one to ten, how much of a dead man am I?”

“Eight.  Eight and a half, maybe.  I thought it better for your health if I were the one to find you.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t just send Leliana to materialize in my drink and shiv me in the nose.”

Cullen shook his head.  “The diplomat she enlisted finally arrived.  Lady Montilyet. Leliana’s helping her settle in.”

“So both of the Divine’s hands are full for the moment.  Good for me.”

Cullen cast a disapproving glance at the tankard.  “I thought you’d dried out.”

“I did,” he said, nodding begrudgingly.  “I hear I’m not the only one.”

Cullen scowled, shifted his eyes, and nodded.

“Huh.  Good for you, Curly,” Varric said with a touch more sincerity than he expected.  “I don’t plan on drinking it, if it makes you feel any better. I did when I came in, I think.  But now I don’t think I have the stomach for it after all. Maybe that’s all I wanted. A cliff to climb up so I could look down off the edge and scare myself shitless.  Maker’s breath, how the hell did we get here?”

“You’re asking me?” Cullen scoffed.  “I think ten years of bad decisions about covers it.”

The tankard hit the floor with a bit more force than was entirely necessary.  “Hawke didn’t-”

“I wasn’t talking about Hawke.  I share enough of the blame myself.” He sighed, rubbing at his temples, trying to allay the headache that was already forming.  “Bad bloody decisions all around.”

The dwarf grumbled, indignant but apologetic.  “You were doing good work back there in Kirkwall before we left, Curly.  I haven’t forgotten. Some days it seemed like you and Aveline were the only ones keeping the fucking walls up.”

Cullen smiled thinly and without even the vaguest hint of humor.  “Some days we were.”

Varric sank into the chair, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes.  “Andraste’s ass, Curly, have we got any chance of fixing this shit?”

“Cassandra seems to think we do.”

Varric gave another irritated grunt, then fell into a troubled silence.

Cullen put his back to the wall, meaning to tell the dwarf he’d give him another five minutes to collect himself and then they’d need find Cassandra before she found them.  And then he froze, eyes widening.  The lyrium still lingered in his body - would yet for months, he knew - and he could feel a vibration, sudden and deep. It resonated in his bones as if he was a tuning fork, making his teeth hum. In his periphery he caught a flash of green through the window, sparking against the greying sky. _Not lightning, wrong color for lightning_ , he thought, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

“Oh Maker, _no_.”

Varric looked up at him, puzzled.  “What is it, Curly? You look-”

And then the world came apart in a thunderclap of force that blew the tavern door half off its hinges, the bottles on the wall behind Flissa shattering instantly.  All sound was swallowed up in a horrible, familiar tuneless ringing as everything shifted, rocking eastward with the shockwave that blew out the fire in the fireplace.  It sent Varric tumbling to the floor and drove Cullen into the wall with a jarring force. His knees gave and he crumpled to the floor, vision gone a bright and blinding white.

Shape and color bled back into the world slowly.  Cullen stared up at the mountainside through the open doorway as the first of the screams, muffled and distant to his damaged and bleeding ears, began in earnest, picking up others as the panic and fear caught like embers in dry hay.  A creeping cold seized his insides that had nothing to do with the wind that blew snow across the floor in little eddies.  First Kinloch.  Then Kirkwall.  Now this.

The sky above was wrenched open, an ethereal laceration of fade green that flashed and swirled and pulled up chunks of rock and stone toward it like a hungry mouth.  Below it lay what remained of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. A flattened scar on the mountainside, a carcass picked clean by a devouring sky.

"Oh, Blondie," Varric said weakly beside him. "Tell me you didn't.  Not again."


	2. Chapter 2

The Seeker's guards hauled the girl into Haven out of the rubble of the temple sometime after midday, the mark on her hand flashing and sputtering like a faulty firework.  Varric watched them drag her into camp: a tiny slip of a girl hanging half-dead from the soldiers' arms as the onlookers started to collect, whispering and muttering curses as her hand pulsed green light in perfect time with the Breach overhead.  Only one seemed more curious than horrified: a bald-headed elf wrapped in furs, a twisted wooden staff strapped to his back. He regarded the scene with something like mild fascination, or maybe boredom, fingers idly turning a blackened fragment of jawbone that hung from a leather cord around his neck.

The girl twisted in their grip as the thing flashed brighter, a gurgling scream caught deep in her throat.  A cry rippled through the crowd in response, and Varric felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There was fear in that cry, revulsion, and the first real threads of outrage.  He eased Bianca off his back quietly. For the first time, Varric actually wished for the Seeker's presence. She was about to have a mob on her hands.

"Out of the way!" The Seeker's voice cut through the crowd, sharp as any sword, and Varric allowed himself the tiniest sliver of relief.  His hands, however, stayed steady on Bianca's stock. He was eye-level with too many clenching fists to be _that_ relieved.

The throng parted and Cassandra Pentaghast emerged, Leliana at her side, both women grim-faced and weary.  Ash streaked the Seeker's face and filled the dents and creases in her armor. The girl cried out again, weaker this time, and Varric was certain he saw the Seeker's hand tighten on her sword.  Any relief he had felt fled.

"Report," the Seeker barked.

One of the guards stepped forward, battering a fist against his breastplate, speaking quickly, his voiced pitched low in hopes his words wouldn't carry.  They did anyway. Fragments trickled down through the crowd in anxious murmurs. _Survivor_ was one.   _Apostate_ another.  And then someone whispered harshly in a carrying voice: " _She came out of the Fade!_ "

"Find Master Taigen," Cassandra said, gripping Leliana's arm.  "Bring him quickly."

"C'mon Seeker," Varric growled through gritted teeth as the other woman sprinted up the hill.  "If you're gonna do something you better do it fast."

As if on cue the Breach flashed, the world lit up in a brilliant wash of ghostly green, and the mark on the girl's hand pulsed blindingly.  She screamed, full-throated in agony, convulsing so violently that she tore herself from the guards' grip and lay thrashing in the snow. Cassandra stumbled back.  

" _ABOMINATION!_ " someone shrieked.  Varric saw the glint of drawn steel from the sash of a ragged-looking templar, saw the recognition flash in the Seeker's eyes.  The templar rushed forward, the crowd parting like water around him, the dagger held high over his head. Too late the Seeker drew her sword, shouting for the guards to protect the prisoner, and then the attacker collapsed at her feet, a feathered bolt sticking out of his back.  The crowd fell silent.

Varric strode forward, Bianca's forestock clicking as he readied another bolt.  "Anybody else want to play stupid?" he shouted, putting himself between the fallen girl and the crowd.  "Come right on up. Bianca would love to meet you."

"What are you doing, Varric?" Cassandra hissed.

He flashed her a dangerous grin.  "Oh I could ask you the same thing, Seeker, because I know exactly what you _should_ be doing right now, and yet here _I_ am doing it for you."

The Seeker shot him a look that could curdle milk and stepped up beside him.  "This woman is the only known survivor from the explosion that destroyed the temple.  We do not know if she is responsible for the destruction or if she is simply another victim.  But as of this moment and until her guilt or innocence can be proven, this woman now under my -" she glanced down at Varric and shook her head, "under _our_ protection."

"Much better," Varric said.

"I live for your approval," the Seeker muttered darkly, motioning one of the guards aside as the other gathered the fallen survivor from the snow.  "Take the girl to the chantry."

Leliana returned as the crowd began to disperse.  "My quarters are closer," she said, waving the guards towards a tiny cabin.  There was a grim set to her jaw that put Varric's teeth on edge. "Master Taigen was at the Conclave."  The words were flat, factual. Cassandra swore. "I found Adan, however," she added quickly. "He is gathering his supplies, I told him to meet us there."

Inside was blessedly warmer, a small fire flickering comfortingly.  The cabin was, by Haven's standards, almost cozy. Books lined two heavy wooden bookcases and sat in neat stacks along the floor.  A red-crested raven regarded the newcomers with mild interest from its cage beneath the window.

Leliana closed the shutters as the guards carried the survivor to the bed in the far corner - a _real_ bed, Varric noted with more than a little irritation, not the barely padded cot that he had been provided that left his back aching.  He turned to close the door behind him and stopped. The bald-headed elf stood about twenty paces away, fingers still fiddling with the grim fetish he wore.

"Did she truly walk out of the Fade, or is that merely misheard rumor?" the elf asked.  He approached the open door slowly, empty hands held in front of him, palms out. His staff was still strapped to his back.  "Peace, child of the Stone," he said with a tinge of amusement when Varric made no move to lower Bianca. "I have no desire to become more intimately acquainted with your crossbow.  My name is Solas, and if the whispers are true, I may be able to help."

Cassandra stepped up behind Varric, armor clanking, and looked him over carefully.  "How do you suppose you can do that? We have a healer, he has been summoned."

"That is no ordinary wound," Solas said.  He turned away, raising a hand to the west.  "Just as that was no ordinary explosion. Whatever destroyed the temple did not simply pierce the veil, it has ripped it open.  If what your men say is true, she may have been pulled into the Fade as the veil was sundered. It likely saved her life, though for how long remains to be seen."

In her sleep, the girl cried out.  It was a desperate, pitiful sound, like a snared deer.

"You give me nothing but suppositions," Cassandra said, voice as dry and brittle as the snapping of a branch.  "I asked you how you can help. If you cannot give me an answer then you do nothing but waste my time."

Solas nodded.  "Forgive me, time is a precious commodity right now.  Your charge there cannot afford delays. I have studied the Fade for many years, madam Seeker.  If as I suspect her mark is a result of whatever might have caused the Breach above us, I may be able to keep her from the worst of its effects."

"So, short version: you can keep that line of spitfire from killing her?" Varric said.

"I do not know if I can, but I would try."

Varric shrugged, shouldering his crossbow.  "That's good enough for me. What about you, Seeker?"

Reluctantly she stepped aside, and Varric did the same.

"So are you going to tell me what that little display was about?" Varric said, catching the Seeker's arm as she turned to follow the newcomer into the cabin.

She gave a sound of mingled disgust and indignation, yanking her arm from his grip so forcefully that it sent her stumbling back into a mess of fishing nets and rods that hung in the alcove.  "How dare you?" she huffed, struggling to regain her footing as two of her guards stepped up into the doorway.

Varric ignored them.  "I could ask you the same thing, _Seeker_ ," he said, his face twisting as hissed her title, as if the word tasted foul.  "Tell me, is mob rule a Chantry policy that I missed somewhere along the line?"

"What are you talking about, dwarf?"

Keeping his voice steady was an old trick, but not always an easy one.  He balled his fists to hide the trembling in his hands. "If I had been a little slower on the draw, that girl in there wouldn't need a healer, she'd need a damned gravedigger.  Now, if it was anyone else, I could probably chalk this up to incompetence or hesitation. But that's the problem, Seeker. You're hot-headed and quick to judge, but you're not incompetent.  And you don't hesitate."

She sniffed disdainfully, but there was a ghost of guilt in her eyes.  "I do not know what you're talking about."

"You saw him as soon as I did, _Seeker_ .  You were in a perfect position to put yourself between that templar and a helpless woman and you didn't.  That wasn't hesitation, that was a _decision_."

"I do not need to answer to you!" she hissed through gritted teeth, eyes darting over his shoulder.  The little knot of people around the bed were becoming increasingly less fixated on their charge and more intent on the pair quietly spitting venom in the mudroom.

"You damned well better answer to somebody," he growled.  "Is this your idea of Chantry justice, Seeker? One person survives, and you're willing to decide her guilt and leave her to die at the hands of whichever zealot gets to her first?"

"The Divine is dead!," the Seeker spat.  Her face fell, and the manic shine in her eyes suddenly spoke more of desperation than paranoia.  "Hundreds of people are dead. You cannot ask me to ignore the possibility that the one person to walk out of that carnage alive could be the one responsible for it!"

"I'm not," he said, some of the edge leaving his voice.  "What I _am_ asking is for you not to ignore the possibility that she could be innocent.  I am asking you to do your duty and seek the _truth_.  And at least give that girl a chance to speak for herself before you let a mob crucify her."

Silently the Seeker pushed past him, waving her guards out the cabin door.  "I-" she began. She shook her head curtly. "She will get a trial," she said finally.  "That is the best I can offer."

"It's a start," he said.


End file.
